In our sector, we work in a world that’s constantly changing and innovating. The skill is to be deeply embedded in the future possibilities as well as the current needs of your business to give yourself that competitive edge. The ever-changing possibilities within tech and finance often give birth to new concepts and innovations, which in turn give rise to new terminology. In popular culture we’ve absorbed everything from doom scrolling to youthquake, to the Oxford English Dictionary’s latest Word of the Year, goblin mode, into our every-day language, and we love a well-observed buzzword that sums up a new concept.
When it comes to our industry, we’ve already debated the benefits of outsourcing certain functions to nearby European countries and called it Nearshoring, but what about developing the concept further and taking the best of what the global workforce has to offer and applying it to building and innovating your offer in the most efficient way? At emagine, we call this Bestshoring.
The term is unique to us, and whilst other consulting firms offer a version of this concept, there are many issues to overcome in harnessing the best from an international workforce, especially if you’re employing them into a new add-on which relies on unfamiliar concepts and technology.
It’s for this reason that we’ve packaged it up and given it a name. It’s more than just a buzzword, it sums up a complex operation, with shifting sands, potential pitfalls and local nuances. Bestshoring can only deliver excellence and security with a combination of extensive on-the-ground knowledge, combined with global understanding and expertise.
In essence, Bestshoring is the practice of delivering a programme of work with the best people from any location, to the best budget. For example, you’re tasked with delivering a program to change the risk calculator of a bank, which determines how much the bank can reasonably invest, spend, or essentially gamble with our money. If it’s a UK-based bank, the UK front office guys with SME knowledge who are industry specialists will run and manage the programme. However, filling the whole project from the UK could be prohibitively expensive. So, the mid-level business analysis and PMO work could be placed in Poland or Portugal, which would be a good fit in terms of time zone and location if you need to visit. That operation would be around 30% cheaper than its UK equivalent. On top of that, you could source some of the quant and technical builds from India, which would be 50-70% cheaper than the UK. This way, you have the dream team with the appropriate skillset and best location to deliver the programme and quality you need within your budget.
Sound ideal? It is, but there are pain points and pitfalls for the uninitiated to be aware of. Cultural differences and misunderstandings can leave you in hot water. Then there’s the sheer scale and distance to be managed in terms of onboarding, time zone, local knowledge, communication and workload.
In Poland for example, when you hand your notice in, you have to finish the rest of that month, and the following month, regardless of exactly when you’ve resigned. Onboarding protocols tend to be unique to each location, so therefore in Poland it means there’s often an eight-week lead time to start a new project.
We also just know that it’s almost impossible to find good quant managers in Poland, so we take care of that and source people to manage the project elsewhere.
The devil’s often in the detail and only learned by experience in the field. So, what might be a seemingly good setup might not always work in practice. In India many of the delivery centres are in the middle of nowhere. Consultants are coached in for a 9-5 shift, but they have to be back on that coach at 5pm sharp, no matter what’s going on in order to get back to their cities or villages. So, if there’s an issue to resolve after 5pm, you’re stuffed. We’ve heard some horror stories in that direction, so all our offices are city centre, or we ensure our consultants have their own mode of transport. During Covid, we provided all of our Indian consultants with backup generators and two different internet providers to ensure that they had power, because that can also be a major issue. Pay is also a big one. It’s very competitive, and consultants will move around for the best deal. So, we overpay our consultants on average by 20%, and they get an annual pay increase of 15% on average. We look after people, we employ the best, and we take all the hassle out of Bestshoring for our clients, mitigating the risks upfront. Basically, you get what you pay for.
Looking to the future, it’s all about the globalization piece. It just doesn’t matter anymore whether people are working from Dublin or Mauritius, or anywhere in between. We can go and find the best talent, wherever they’re based, and manage and harness that for our clients. It’s no longer going to be efficient to have big, empty offices sitting there unused. And the best talent will always demand the best circumstances for themselves. We’ve made ourselves experts at facilitating all of that, making Bestshoring the best solution all round.
